Catherine Walker (designer)
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Catherine Walker (June 1945) is a British fashion designer.
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[edit] Life and career
Walker was born in France in June, 1945. A philosophy student, she is a self-taught designer who embarked upon her design career as a widow with two young daughters to support.
She began her commercial life selling children’s clothes from a basket walking up and down the Kings Road. She used her skills to move into couture and spent the following years working with her clients by day whilst teaching herself the skills of pattern cutting and design by night.
Especially desirable were the dresses cut longer and narrower than those that were currently available. This elongated line has remained one of her most notable signatures and is the handwriting that distinguishes the designer.
As a designer what marks her out is her ability to create clothes that caress and move seamlessly with the wearer – ultimately, they are clothes that celebrate the feminine body.
Catherine Walker’s designs belie highly complex pattern cutting and meticulous attention to every detail. Indeed her immaculately executed garments can withstand the closest scrutiny and – rarely in today’s fashion world – reveal the finest craft skills more commonly associated with historical haute couture.
In 1991, Walker was awarded Designer of the year for Glamour and in 1990 Designer of the year for Couture.
[edit] The Company
Catherine Walker opened her studio in 1977 in Chelsea’s residential Sydney Street. She has been a leading and highly successful couturiere working within the Fashion industry for 30 years.
Catherine Walker Ltd specialises in couture designs. Individual orders are taken from the collection, and made-to-measure garments are produced.
The atelier based on Sydney Street is run along Parisian lines, with separate studios devoted to tailoring - coats and suits made from flat patterns and dressmaking - involving drapery using more pliant cloths, with additional skilled craftspeople employed to undertake embroidery.
The sales assistants possess intimate knowledge of each clients taste and figure type. They are responsible for organising fittings and communicating the information about each client to the relevant studio.
With a loyal clientele spanning 28 years, Catherine also has many celebrity fans who wear her dresses to events: Joely Richardson, Olivia Williams, Amanda Holden, Tasha de Vasconcelos, Emilia Fox and Lucy Liu to name a few as well as young members of the Royal Family, such as Viscountess Linley, Lady Helen Taylor, and Lady Gabriella Windsor.
Walker designs two seasonal collections each year – of evening wear, daywear and tailoring, she also designs wedding gowns and since surviving breast cancer has created a range of skin care products.
[edit] Diana, Princess of Wales
As the favourite designer of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, it is the wardrobe Catherine Walker created for her most famous, elegant client that sealed her reputation and revealed her couture skills to a worldwide audience.
The relationship started three months after Diana's marriage to Prince Charles in 1981, and lasted until Diana's death sixteen years later, during which time Walker provided the Princess with a flow of designs.
She designed the dress that Diana was buried in.
